Sometimes a blog post doesn’t need too many words. 14 years without making the playoffs. We finally did it. Yeah we’ll probably get swept by the Rockets. Who cares? I feel like that 105 year old man they show on TV when a team’s about to win a championship. “He sat through it all!”

I’ve been a fan of the Minnesota Timberwolves since 2002. I saw some good years, then sat through a decade and a half of BDSM with all of the bleeding and none of the enjoyment. I went to games that were so sparsely attended that even though I bought upper bowl tickets, I sat in the third row courtside and nobody stopped me. Hell, I could have played and nobody would have cared. I slogged through Rambis, Kahn, Darko, knuckle push-ups and the Cream Team. Still year in and year out I come back to this team, because I gave my heart to them. I even made a video where I couldn’t burn Kevin Love’s jersey because I loved the Pups too much.

But after last night, I will only put in as much effort as the Timberwolves do. And that currently is zero. Players and coaches change over the years, but the one thing that remains constant is the fans. And the Timberwolves fans deserve better than this. My 98 year old grandma would have tried harder and she’s not alive.

Maybe it’s because we have a town named Odin? Maybe he hates the Mall Of America because having four magnet stores is the modern day Tower of Babel? Maybe he thinks Atmosphere is wack? All I know is that the Minnesota Timberwolves are 27-16 right now and we can’t jinx this shit by acting like we’re all fancy pants.

Whenever a Minnesotan thinks we’re doing all right, we get the rug pulled out from under us. Think 2004 Wolves, think 2016 Vikings, think season 2 of the TV show “Vikings”, think Prince after the Batman soundtrack because fight me that shit was awesome, think me in yoga class when I finally got crow pose and then fell on my face and possibly farted. We haven’t had this good of a record since I had hair and I’ve been bald for a really long time. If we screw this season up I’m gonna lose my eyebrows from stress and then how am I supposed to act surprised when Shabazz Muhammad passes the ball?

So I’m gonna take one for the team. Literally.

We suck.

We deserve to lose and surely this is not reverse psychology towards God and the universe. Jimmy Butler? Dude’s horrible. We’d be better off with that Finnish guy who looks like Screech. Karl-Anthony Towns plays Twitch so much because he’s trying to drown out the voices that tell him to strangle baby ducks. Andrew Wiggins is the Defensive Player Of The Year (<— reverse psychology inside of reverse psychology, bitches!) and has a really gross smile. Taj Gibson is LAZY. Tyus Jones is actually from Des Moines. Jamal Crawford is afraid to shoot because all of his tattoos are fake and they might smudge off when he moves. Jeff Teague voted for Trump. Gorgui Dieng’s arms are physically incapable of leaving his hips while running (this one’s actually true). Marcus Georges-Hunt hates “Gorgeous Gorgui” because he thinks HIS nickname should be “Gorgeous Georges”, which does make more sense phonetically, but SCREW THAT LOCKER ROOM POISONER! Belly doesn’t shovel his sidewalk in the winter and just puts down salt that hurts your dogs. Cole Aldrich hates “Mighty Ducks”. Aaron Brooks puts “Smooth Move” herbal laxative tea in Shabazz Muhammad’s Gatorade and it doesn’t matter because Shabazz plays three minutes a game. Justin Patton and Anthony Brown are conspiracy theories made up by Kyrie Irving. Tom Thibodeau is just a tree stump that someone drew a face on. And all Timberwolves fans think Nikola Jokic is better than Towns, miss David Kahn and Kurt Rambis dearly and can’t wait until the most exciting thing at the Target Center is the Cherry Berry give-away again.

Phew.

You’re welcome.

Up next we play the Knicks in Minneapolis, where we’ll surely lose because we really screwed up by getting rid of Michael Beasley.

I thought this would feel different. I thought when the Wolves were finally in the playoff race for the first time since “Friends” got cancelled that I would be over the moon, like during KG’s return home game or when Burger King started selling Lucky Charm’s milkshakes. Instead, I feel confused, conflicted and slightly lackadaisical, like I do after three Lucky Charms milkshakes.

Canis Hoopus posted a great article about how to enjoy the Timberwolves this season. It was helpful, but I think they slightly underestimated how unfun the Wolves have been to watch this year. Technically, at 16-11, we are getting the job done. But it has been ugly and painful like a dentist who jabbed the Novocaine into your forehead, but still got your wisdom teeth out, then, for no apparent reason, made the dental technicians stay until midnight.

It’s kind of jarring to go from losing with the flash of Ricky Rubio and Zach LaVine to winning with…what? Memphis 2.0? We’re more Shit ‘N Blind than Grit ‘N Grind. We’re not particularly good at anything as a team, but our top players are just so individually good that we can fluke our way into a win if the team’s top player is out for the night. Which seems to be a trend. Either Aaron Brooks’ actual purpose on this team is to Tanya Harding everybody’s knees before the game or else nobody is scared of us, because it feels like the last superstar we played against was Isiah Thomas. The short pants one.

Here are some ideas that could help make our team fun to watch again:

Attach sleigh bells to Jeff Teague. This will serve a double purpose by not only ringing in the Holiday Spirit to the team, but alerting Jeff that he should pass the ball after 2-3 jingles instead of the whole damn song.

Allow fans to punch Cole Aldrich in the face when we are frustrated. It’s not personal. He’s already missing teeth, he never plays and he’s making a ton of money. Serve a greater purpose, Cole.

Instead of giving fans Cherry Berry when the opposing team misses two free throws in a row, give it to Thibs on the sideline and zoom in on the jumbotron until he gets brain freeze. I’m too lazy to redeem that ice cream anyway and I’ve always wanted to know what a constipated rhino looks like.

Jimmy Butler karaoke at halftime. Only Hootie songs.

Spectacular injuries. How much drama did the Gordon Hayward injury add to the Celtics year? I’m not saying any players should do this. I’m thinking assistant coach Rick Brunson could perhaps get hit in the face with Crunch’s t-shirt gun and get carted off before returning Willis Reed style. We get some much needed drama. He gets some attention and a free shirt. Win-win!

Stop losing to shit teams.

Next up we play the Philadelphia 76ers at home on Tuesday. Aaron Brooks will have the night off from wacking knees because according to my sources half the team just fell into a swimming pool and broke their pelvises.

The Minnesota Timberwolves just got their nipples handed to them 130-107 by the headless husk of the Indiana Pacers, without Myles Turner, at HOME. There are few words that accurately describe how embarrassing and disheartening this loss was. Discommodious? Unpropitious? Timberwolvesian?

Yeah, we didn’t have Jimmy Butler, who was out with an upper respiratory illness and with our luck will be dead by Friday. However, that doesn’t account for how bad we were without ONE player. If we are going to make the Western Conference Playoffs for the first time since “The Notebook” was released in theaters, then we cannot lose games like this. We have to be perfect from now on. We have to go back in time and win every single game since 1989. We have to steal Michael Beasley’s weed, convince Stephon Marbury that Minneapolis is China and then sign David Kahn up for adoption to Charles Lindberg circa 1912 or whenever he was born. That’s how perfect we have to be.

How is it that year after year, no matter who the players or coaches are, we are still the same lousy Timberwolves? We are like the town from “It”, where the faces change but the clown remains the same. There were actually boos at the Target Center last night. Do you know how hard it is to make Minnesotans boo? We would rather cut off our fingers and put them in our lutefisk than show emotion in public. All of our emoticons on our phones are the same blank face. We booed these punks. I’m pretty sure someone from St. Cloud is self-flagellating themselves in a closet right now for expressing sentiment in public.

The all-purpose, all-emotion emoticon of Minnesota.

Some of our bandwagon fans this year are probably wondering how us Minnesotans deal with all this year in and year out? Here’s five quick, easy steps:

Displace your anger – Push it way, way down. Don’t address it mentally or verbally. Let it come out sideways towards your co-workers when they take too long at the copier.

Get depressed – It’s gonna happen anyway due to lack of sunlight and vitamin D during the winter, so why not blame it on things that are out of your control like grown men who can’t achieve mediocrity at the sport they’re paid to play?

Eat – Get fat. Get real fat.

Next year – Oh man, we’re gonna be good next year.

We play again tonight against the Pistons in Detroit. Jimmy Butler is out again (RIP J-Buckets). Let’s win this shit so we can all pretend, in true Minnesota fashion, like last night didn’t happen and everything’s fine. Repress, rinse, repeat.

I literally say this every year, but WE ARE GOING TO BE AWESOME THIS YEAR! Every time I’ve said that in the past has been a bullshit lie and I knew it. I mean, yes, I believed it at the time. Yet, deep down I knew we would never win with Alexey Shved at anything other than a “Saddest Russian” contest? Every year leading up to this I’ve just been trying to justify spending large portions of my adult life staking my happiness on 12 random men who aren’t even really from Minnesota mostly (‘sup, Tyus).

But this year is different. This year, we might actually play an NBA game in May. Has there been a Timberwolves game played in warm weather since Kanye West’s first album? Dude’s like 40 now. 90% of the league doesn’t even know we can grow deciduous trees. Anyway, we had a SUPER busy off-season and I will now grade each major move we made one by one, because I am a super qualified judge of basketball:

Minnesota trades Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn and the #7 pick to the Chicago Bulls for Jimmy Butler and the #16 pick.

A+

Zach LaVine is a slam-dunk champion who just wrecked his ACL. That’s like a masseuse whose arms fell off. Nobody wants a hook massage. Kris Dunn is horrible. Every single YouTube clip of him “breaking ankles” ends before the shot nears the rim because he shot like 2.5% from the field. I think Kris Dunn is actually a Lacrosse player who accidentally walked into the NBA draft and they picked him anyway. And the #7 pick ended up being some Finnish dude who I know next to nothing about but the Bulls chose him, so he surely sucks. We fleeced these bitches!

I made up a grade lower than F because I’m so upset. I had to take my signed, framed Ricky Rubio photo out of my office and put it in the basement earlier this summer. I knew he was going to get traded and I had to start mentally distancing myself. I’ll never change this face, Ricky! I would have “Thelma & Louise”ed right off this cliff with you!

Listen, anything that gets rid of Adreian Payne is an A+. Drop Payne, Jimmy Butler and move the team to Belarus? A+! Not only does he look 45 at 25 somehow, but his ridiculously spelled first name has way too many vowels in it. It’s like his mom was playing Scrabble when he was born and the doctor knocked the board over and she just went with it. Oh, and he sucks.

Minnesota signs Taj Gibson

B+

I like Taj. Yeah, he’s kind of past his prime and a little expensive, but so is HBO and that shit is good for at least three months out of the year.

Minnesota signs Jeff Teague

No grade

I will not acknowledge Jeff Teague as a human being until he apologies for breathing the air that Ricky would be breathing if he were here.

Minnesota signs Jamal Crawford

B-

Fuck it, why not? He’s super old and kind of like clicking on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google. What’s the worst that can happen? (Do NOT say Brandon Roy, Kevin Garnett 2.0 or Sam Cassell after the big nuts dance tore his hamstring.)

Minnesota signs Shabazz Muhammad for peanuts after he turned down a $44 million contract with us earlier in the summer.

A+

One time I got addicted to Ebay and bought an Ullr (the Nordic god of skiing and archery) pendant for $250 after getting into a bidding war with what in retrospect was surely someone in cahoots with the owner. A year later I sold it on Ebay for $5. This is how Shabazz must feel.

Minnesota signs Albert Brooks for an undisclosed amount of money. (It’s actually Aaron Brooks, but I accidentally typed Albert Brooks and I loved him in “Finding Dory” so I’m keeping it.)

There’s been some vicious snubs in the world lately. Donald Trump’s replacement pick for National Security Advisor turned him down because he doesn’t know anybody from Russia. People flipped out that Adele beat Beyonce because everybody forgot that the Grammys are a steaming pile of manatee poop and mean about as much as a Hug Award from your mom. My body said no to me just now when I tried to go for a jog because I run like a duck and gummy bears are not a good warm-up snack.

But no snub is more vicious than Karl-Anthony Towns being left off the 2017 NBA All-Star team. What does a bitch have to do?! He’s averaging 23.7 ppg, 11.8 rpg, 2.9 asp, 1.4 bpg and has the third best smile in the league after fellow Timberwolf Andrew Wiggins and former Timberwolf Corey Brewer. (Most underrated smile is Tom Thibodeau’s, which comes out as often as Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog, but looks like a drunken badger that just discovered Scientology.)

Who are all these chumps that got the nod over Towns? Allow me to go through the list and break down why they don’t deserve it. I’m only going to go through the Western Conference because 1) Towns plays in the West and 2) Literally anybody who can dribble in a straight line and doesn’t have 4 DUIs gets into the All-Star Game in the East. Kurt Rambis is playing in the East. Fuck the East.

Stephen Curry – If Stephen Curry is so hot then why was he drafted after Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn, huh? Overrated! You’ll always just be Dell Curry’s son to me!

James Harden – Has anybody bothered to ask why James Harden’s beard is so big? I’ll tell you: PEDs. He hides PEDs in his beard during games and when he does that little “mix it up” pantomine after scoring points he’s literally mixing up his meds. Illegal!

Kevin Durant – I don’t know if I can even talk about Kevin Durant in the West because if the East wins he’ll just go over there next year.

Kawhi Leonard – Kawhi Leonard is not a real person. He’s an emotionless robot created by Gregg Popovich using spare salsa he found in Texas for organic matter and the extra “Gs” in Gregg’s stupid first name. SHOULD NOT PLAY.

Anthony Davis – Anthony Davis looks like the kind of guy who’d have really wet palms. Just a creepy dude standing in the corner with his (literally) trademarked unibrow getting everything slimy with his disgusting swamp hands. It makes the balls greasy and unusable.

Russell Westbrook – This man is a danger to everything and everyone around him. If you thought Anthony Davis was creepy, wait until you see Westbrook’s “Silence Of The Lambs” dungeon where he keeps and tortures all the people who looked at him sideways or cut him off in traffic or stole his Urkel glasses. Unsafe!

Klay Thompson – I hate Klay Thompson’s stupid face so much. It looks like the thing they lay terrorists on when they waterboard them. He looks like Screech if his dad were rich. So what, you can shoot threes. I saw Manute Bol hit six threes once. You ain’t special!